Monday, 3 August 2009

Well, I'm back riding again which is great. Sadly the weather has decided to respond to my return to the road by unleashing the precipitation which I haven't experienced all year in California. Saturday was a wet one, as was Thursday. It's funny how quickly you loose the knack for riding in the rain. I very nearly ate asphalt on a couple of descents.

Sunday was a top notch day, nice weather and great company. I set of with the old men on the club run, it was great to go and do the club run, I remember when this was the highlight of my week, I'd take a rest the day before and eat lots of pasta. Now it's a nice easy paced ride of roughly 70 miles, we do a different route each week and take it in turns to lead. Generally the A and B runs meet at a café (see hwo I used an accent on café – take note) where we have tea and cakes. Then we head back to town, we normally have a little bit of a burn up towards the end to sprint for the 30 sign into town.

After we got to the café stop this week I headed the 40 or so miles over to Worcester to watch a local race which lots of friends were in. The only minor issue was that I wasn't entirely sure where it was. You see there are lots of little villages around here and I knew the one I wanted began with a K, problem is so do lots of them. This led to a bit of impromptu testing from one village to another and us rolling up as everyone was leaving. After a few chats I persuaded some of my mates to go change the route for their planned ride home so we could ride together. It's amazing what you can get people to do when you employ the "fat lazy slacker" line. We rolled around a few villages and then back towards our respective homes, we hadn't planned for the block headwind so it turned into a bit of a sufferfest.

A word of advice for anyone who wants to put in 120 miles on a Sunday – don't go out on the cider the night before, missing breakfast 'cos you feel hungover might result in you getting a little bit floozy! My bloodsugar wasn't in its happy place after 100 plus miles in the wind so we pulled into a garage and loaded up on vimto and boost bars which got me home. The debris from this ride was pretty amusing, I have just checked my bin and found 1 boost bar, 2 trek bars, 1 trek protein bar and a cocoa orange nakd bar (which was AWESOME). The hog roast I had on Saturday night also deserves a mention, perfect pre race fuel –no, yummy- yes.

Anyway when I got home I did my typical thing, having survived entirely on rectangular food until 4pm I raided the cupboards and gorged myself like a little piggy. Even after 22 years my mother remains amazed and somewhat disgusted at my ability to see off a whole biopot yogurt with honey nut loops, then go to town on some tuna pasta and still do some work on a Victoria sponge. So yeah, my cyclists' appetite has returned. Having looked at the bloodsugar numbers it's amazing what 3-4 days back training can do to the metabolism, maybe fat people might want to give it a try…….

Today's Monday. I have spent all day baking a courgette cake (yummy), making ratatouille (also yummy) and making a tt bike out of my old road bike (I'm not going to lie it's fugly). More on ming the merciless (which is what I'll be calling the new bike) as and when I can bring myself to go out on it.